Director teams with StudioCanal on adaptation

Brazilian multihyphenate Walter Salles will team with StudioCanal to direct “La contadora de peliculas.”

A sentimental ’60s tale set in a dirt-poor mining settlement in Chile’s Atacama Desert, “Contadora” adapts the bestseller of the same title by Chilean writer Hernan Rivera Letelier.

Salles is currently writing the screenplay. StudioCanal will sell worldwide rights outside Brazil and Argentina.

“Contadora” turns on a lively 12-year-old living on a pittance with her wheelchair-confined father, a former miner, and four siblings. The family scrapes together money for her to catch the films at the local cinema. She then recounts what she sees.

“Contadora” will be produced by StudioCanal; Videocine, Salles’ Brazilian label with Mauricio Ramos Andrade; France’s Selenium Films; and KS Films in Argentina. “Contadora” was one of the last projects of the late Oskar Kramer of KS Films.

Skedded to roll ahead after Salles’ next helming project, “On the Road,” “Contadora” looks to play tohelmer’s strengths, both for landscapes and for controlling a sentimental tale.